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Today is a day that ends in 'y.' So, naturally, Rep. Ilhan Omar wants to spend billions more in taxpayer money. The far-left Michigan Democrat’s latest socialist scheme is a quasi-universal basic income program. She just introduced legislation that would pave the way for the first national “UBI” program in the United States.
© Provided by Washington Examiner Omar’s
legislation, the SUPPORT Act, would create a new office in the Treasury Department and fund a $2.5 billion grant program for local pilot experiments with UBI. Then, over the next decade, it would establish a taxpayer-funded “basic income” of $1,200 per month for all U.S. adults who earn $75,000 or less annually with an additional $600 per month for each child in a household. The income “phase out” would begin at $150,000 annual incomes for two-adult households.
This all equates to a “basic income” of $14,400 per adult. And, in the congresswoman’s telling, this bill could eliminate poverty simply by raining cash down to the masses.
“Poverty is a choice,” Omar
said in a statement announcing her bill. “For too long we have prioritized endless growth while millions are homeless, hungry or without healthcare. We as a nation have the ability to make sure everyone has their basic needs like food, housing and healthcare met.”
Sounds wonderful, right? Of course, the idea of “free” money for all and eliminating everything bad in the world sounds nice when promised by idealistic politicians and considered only in the abstract. But in reality, there are too many problems with this fantastical proposal to count.
For one, there’s no such thing as “free” money. Every dollar this plan gives to someone in our society must, directly or indirectly, take away from someone else in our society.
While we don’t have budget scores or estimates of this proposal yet, a somewhat similar plan by President Joe Biden for per-child, quasi-universal handouts is
estimated to cost
$1.1 trillion over a decade. (To put that figure in context, it’s roughly $7,676 per federal taxpayer.)
So, it’s safe to assume Omar’s plan for quasi-UBI would cost taxpayers hundreds of billions, if not trillions. And no, it couldn’t just be funded by “taxing the rich.” You could confiscate every dollar owned by U.S. billionaires, and it would only fund the federal government for
about nine months.
This means any gains to everyday people would have to be weighed against increased taxes, lowered economic growth from heightened federal debt, and/or “stealth taxation” from inflation if the money was printed to finance the scheme.
It’s unclear whether this reallocation — it’s redistribution, not a creation of wealth — would stimulate the economy or be a net positive for society.
Omar’s arguments for the massive, unprecedented wealth-confiscation-and-redistribution scheme also mislead through glaring omission. The congresswoman fails to mention we already have existing welfare programs funded by taxpayers to provide low-income people with “free” healthcare, food stamps, housing subsidies, unemployment benefits, and much, much more.
How can Omar justify bestowing tens of thousands in cash to beneficiaries already living on the public dole?
Part of what makes the plan so bizarre and indefensible is there’s no element of need in this proposal. It’s one thing to argue taxpayers should be forced to fund welfare for the disabled, poor single mothers, or other groups unable to uplift themselves. But Omar proposes that a productive society forcibly finances a permanent cushion for those who simply do not wish to work or contribute.
And it’s not actually the way to fight poverty. In stark contrast to the congresswoman’s approach, free-market capitalism, trade, and the expansion of work and opportunity — not welfare — have led to
drastic reductions in global poverty over the last half-century. Meanwhile, welfare dependence has
trapped entire generations in poverty and prevented those ensnared in its grasp from climbing the ladder of economic success.
Still, there might actually be some merit to Omar’s idea if it were structured in a radically different way.
The free-market economist Milton Friedman
famously proposed a UBI-like system, but he proposed it as a replacement, not a supplement, to the entire existing welfare state. The logic, sound in theory, was that directly giving people cash wouldn’t involve the administration, bureaucracy, waste, and fraud that endemically characterizes our current welfare system.
But Omar just wants to add it on top. So, the congresswoman’s latest proposal is little more than another misguided socialist scheme wrapped in lofty rhetoric and empty promises.
Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Washington Examiner
contributor. Subscribe to his YouTube channel or email him at bradpolumbojournalism@gmail.co m.
Communist soros protege has every intention of destroying America.
she lied to get in, married her brother to get him in america , and is a devout marxist radical.
From my cold, dead hands.
Ilhan Omar’s latest socialist proposal would trap us in welfare state stagnation
